Quirks of Elections

The Donkey Vote relates to a situation where voters who do not know the candidates or for whatever reason are not interested in the election find that it is mandatory to vote.

When faced with a requirement to mark all squares on the polling paper they start at the top with 1, then mark lower squares from 2 to say 10.

NOTE: In this election you can lodge a valid vote by just marking 1 in the square against any candidate’s name.

PREFERENCES

Traditionally, preferences were when all boxes needed to be numbered (this is not the case for this election). In this election, the only mandatory requirement is to clearly mark one candidate box with your preference.

INDEPENDENTS

On the ballot paper you will be given on polling day you may note that nine of the ten candidate are listed as ‘Independent’. But what does this mean?

For election purposes a candidate can elect to choose to list as ‘Independent’ rather than for the political party of which they are a member. So how do you determine who has a political affiliation and who doesn’t?

On the Candidate Information Sheet lodged with the Electoral Office, candidates are required to declare their political affiliations. Based on these documents, the ‘Independent’ candidates who are not members of any political party are: